Our Hospitality (1923)

Buster Keaton’s first feature-length comedy is one
of his best, a comic gem set against a backdrop of a Hatfield-McCoy
style family feud. Raised far from the scene of generations of
“McKay-Canfield” violence, young Willie McKay (Keaton) knows nothing
about the bad blood between the two families — until the time comes for
him to go home and claim his inheritance.

Artistic/Entertainment Value

Moral/Spiritual Value

Age Appropriateness

MPAA Rating

Caveat Spectator

Of course there’s a girl (Natalie Talmadge, whom Keaton later
married), and of course she turns out to be a Canfield, and of course
Willie’s determination to stay away from the Canfields doesn’t work out
quite as planned.

Much of the humor involves a riff on Southern hospitality, as the
Canfields decide that they can’t kill Willie while he’s their guest —
i.e., while he’s under their roof. A cat-and-mouse game ensues, with
the Canfield men trying to get Willie to step outside while he tries
desperately not to be caught outdoors — all under the nose of the
blissfully ignorant Virginia, who has no idea who her gentleman friend
is.

Fans of Keaton’s great train classic The General
will be struck by Keaton’s early, adroit use of a much earlier period
steam engine. This model runs on flexible tracks that look as if they
were simply unspooled across the landscape, and the engine itself moves
no faster than a horse-drawn buggy, allowing Willie’s dog to trot along
under the cars for the duration of the trip (much like the Ingalls’s
dog Jack trotting under the family wagon in the Little House books).

Keaton was given to grand comic gestures, a flair seen in a
spectacular throwaway gag in which a demolished dam and a huge cascade
of water inadvertently provides momentary cover for Keaton’s hapless
hero. But the film’s most memorable moment is unarguably a breathtaking
climactic stunt on the cusp of a waterfall.